Three nice points but not an altogether convincing performance. It started brightly when Julio Baptista headed us into a 5th minute lead after good work from Adebayor. ‘That’ll fill the Beast full of confidence’, I thought to myself but after he scuffed two relatively easy chances, the sort of chances that Heather Mills would have stuck away with her wooden leg, I realised it wasn’t confidence he was filled with but poo.
Cesc had a good shot saved and Adebayor had a header saved and that was about it for the first half. The second half was pretty dull and with Fulham fighting for their Premiership lives we let them get back into the game. Not that they created anything much or looked in any way dangerous until they scored. Jens Lehmann showed why some people have had doubts about renewing his contract. He came miles out of his goal to punch a ball that the defenders would have dealt with, it fell to Simon Davies who lobbed it in to equalise. Kamikaze goalkeeping and to be honest I’d be just as happy to see Manuel in the side for the next couple of games. Jens needs a kick up the arse.
It was down to Emmanuel Adebayor to spare his blushes though. A good pass from Cesc set him through the middle and he shimmied then curled one into the bottom corner. He really deserved the goal and I think he’s a player who, if he keeps working the way he does at the moment, could do big things for us in the future. Then Moritz Volz rugby-tackled Alexander Hleb and Gilberto scored his 9th league goal of the season from the spot. Game over, three points Arsenal and Fulham are in big, big trouble now.
Afterwards Arsene Wenger pointed out the deterioration in our performance but I suppose you can take a positive from the fact they reacted to it. It’d be much better if they just played well though. It was one of those typically lazy end of season affairs though and we did play some nice stuff in the first half hour. We’ll have to perform better than that against Chelsea next week though.
Before yesterday’s game Danny Fiszman, who is normally very media shy, gave an interview to Sky Sports about Stan Kroenke and the possibility of a takeover. While he admitted the board would meet Kroenke because of his now significant holding in the club the American won’t have been encouraged by his words. He basically said what anyone with any common sense outlook on this whole thing has said and it’s that a takeover funded by loans will take money out of the club. He did say the board are open to anything that will improve the club, but:
I think it is going to be very, very difficult to explain to me and the rest of the board how you can make a substantial investment, which has to be £400m, £500m or £600m and expect a return for that. Even with an eight to 10 per cent return you have to take £50m or so. And that has to come out of the club, otherwise there’s no point in making the purchase.
Again, that’s the bottom line. Money goes out of Arsenal. He refused to comment when asked if Double-D was in league with Satan Kroenke and went on to say:
The board has 45.5 per cent of the shares of the company, we also have friends which take us over 50 per cent so they can mount a hostile bid but they are never going to get control of the club.
KAPOW! I’d say if the board had a Myspace it’d have like, 504,365 friends and if David Dein had a Myspace he’d only have that default guy and then the default guy would delete him because he wouldn’t want anyone to think he was a total lamer who hung around with sunbed freakazoids.
Congratulations now to the Arsenal Ladies who drew 0-0 with Umea yesterday but won the UEFA Cup on aggregate. I saw most of it and Emma Byrne, Arsenal’s Irish keeper, made some good saves and it’s a great achievement for everyone involved in the ladies set up, well done again to the players and to Vic Akers who’s done such a good job.
Elsewhere Thierry Henry’s thoughts on Sp*rs scoring equalising goals are most entertaining while Nicklas Bendtner says he’ll do everything to break into the Arsenal first team. Would he eat a dinosaur’s testicle poached in alligator piss? We shall see.
And that’s that for this Monday morning. The week will be quiet enough but there’s plenty of interest in Europe and we can laugh at Sam Allardcye who will hopefully go onto smaller and worser things with whatever club he lands at. We’ll feel the tremors, no doubt.
